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If an agile team uses the planning poker to estimate User Stories (features in FB), how would you go about entering those estimates into fogbugz so that EBS keeps working?

At the moment, every 2 weeks members of a team sit down together and estimate the stories that will make up their next sprint. One of them is at the keyboard and enters the estimates against features in fogbugz. From what I understand, only the person at the keyboard will have these stories taken into account in his EBS.

Should we create a virtual user that is used when entering the estimates and that would represent the entire team's ability to estimate? What happens in EBS when the person working on the case and the person entering the estimate are different though?

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flag	asked Jul 30 2010 at 14:47 Rodrigue 470●3●10

	This is a real pain for us too. One solution might be for the EBS data to be put against the user who first tracks work against the case or who resolves it, NOT the user who first estimated it. – Steve Baxter Aug 17 2010 at 17:21
	I agree. I think this is a poor design decision. At the very least, we should have the facility to select who the estimator is when creating a case. That way, a virtual user representing a team could be selected. – Rohland May 12 2011 at 10:59

Rich Armstrong · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-02 15:30:27Z UTC

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Virtual users can't log in or be responsible for estimates. You could have a dedicated regular user for planning poker, or you could just have one person be consistently the one at the keyboard. That way, the estimation history for that person would represent (mostly) the team's consensus.

It's not perfect, but it's a start.

answered Aug 2 2010 at 15:30

Rich Armstrong♦♦
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Thanks for the answer. One precision though: if I create a dedicated user that is used to enter the estimates, does the team have to log as that user when entering the elapsed value for EBS to work? Does that prevent the individual members from login in and using the working on feature? – Rodrigue Aug 2 2010 at 21:47

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No, and no. Team members can charge time to cases, and even update the estimate as they go, without sacrificing the benefit of EBS, which pulls from a pool of velocities when it runs its simulation. A velocity is the quotient of the actual time charged versus the original estimate, only for cases that have been resolved (and possibly closed... I can't remember). Thus, no matter what changes, the original estimate is always used. See this: fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/3880 – Rich Armstrong♦ Aug 3 2010 at 13:51

Estimates made by the entire team and EBS

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